George Mallison
1929
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NOTE |
George Mallison (1870–1940) was a veteran of the United States Navy who lost his leg at the start of his career in an anchor chain accident. After a distinguished career, he retired in 1907 to become a lawyer, only to be recalled to active duty in World War I. Following the war, he retired and spent his remaining years engaged in political and scholarly interests, which resulted in his 1929 book Color at Home and Abroad, a wildly racist book about the dangers of race mixing for the vitality of white civilization. Mallison argued that the white race was naturally superior and would reign supreme but for the threat of miscegenation, concluding that the white-majority countries should band together to govern the remainder of the world and that America’s Black population should be removed to Africa. The Army and Navy Register called the book “extraordinary” and praised its “discriminating selection of authorities.” The fourth chapter was a long and very racist analysis of Atlantis as a white paradise, with an argument that Peru was originally an Aryan colony of Atlantis until the sinking of Atlantis allowed race-mixing to overwhelm Peru.
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CHAPTER IV.
ATLANTIS
Ignatius Donnelly, in his remarkable work, “Atlantis, the Antediluvian World,” brings into review a host of facts which, directly or indirectly through the deductive or inductive process, point with irresistible force to the past existence of Atlantis as a verity. Not only must we come to this conclusion as to the existence of a physical Atlantis in the remote past, but we must also accept, as probable, the further conclusion that it was the land in which the ancestors of the White race spent the probationary period of their infancy and in which they developed a great civilization with far-flung colonies long before the land was engulfed in that great cataclysm which comes to us as the Deluge of the Bible.
The facts pointing to the existence of Atlantis are many. To begin, Solon, the great law-giver of Athens, visited in Egypt 600 years before the Christian Era, and, while there, learned many things from its wise men about the history of his own Greece and its relations with Atlantis in ancient times. A part of what was learned by Solon comes to us from Plato, who lived 400 B. C. Among other things, “The records inform us of the destruction by Athens of a singularly powerful army, an army which came from the Atlantic Ocean and which had the effrontery to invade Europe and Asia; for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the strait which you call the Pillars of Hercules there was an island larger than Libya and even Asia. (Asia Minor and North Africa correspond with Asia and Libya in ancient nomenclature.) From this island one could easily pass to other islands, and from them to the entire continent which surrounds the interior sea. What there is on this side of the strait of which we are speaking resembles a vast gateway, the entrance of which might be narrow, but it is actually a sea, and the land which surrounds it is a real continent. In the Island Atlantis reigned kings of amazing power. They had under their dominion the entire island, as well as several other islands and some parts of the continent. Besides, on the hither side of the strait, they were still reigning over Libya as far as Egypt and over Europe as far as the Tyrrhenian. All this power was once upon a time united in order by a single blow to subjugate our country, your own, and all the peoples living on the hither side of the strait. It was then that the strength and courage of Athens blazed forth. By the valor of her soldiers and their superiority in the military art, Athens was supreme among the Hellenes; but, the latter having been forced to abandon her, alone she braved the frightful danger, stopped the invasion, piled victory upon victory, preserved from slavery nations still free, and restored to complete independence all those who, like ourselves, live on this side of the Pillars of Hercules. Later, with great earthquakes and inundations, in a single day and one fatal night, all who had been warriors against you were swallowed up. The Island of Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea. Since that time the sea in these quarters has become unnavigable; vessels cannot pass there because of the sands which extend over the site of the buried isle.” [1]
The statements contained in this quotation are of a very startling character; and, unless founded upon facts within the knowledge of the Egyptians, it seems impossible that they could have conformed in so many respects to actual facts that came within the knowledge of Europeans only after the rediscovery of America by Columbus 2000 years later. How could an Egyptian priest, 600 years before the Christian Era, speak of the great sea (Atlantic) beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar) of the Continent (North American and South America) that formed the true boundary of the sea, of the colonies of Atlantis (Mexico and Peru) in the continent beyond-how could one so do unless he spoke with the assurance that comes from historical records that accurately preserved past achievements of the race? At the time when Solon received this information no people of the then-known world were a seafaring people who could have imparted any of this information of their own knowledge. The Egyptians were never a seafaring people; and it was not until the reign of Pharaoh Necho, or Neku, II., who succeeded to the throne in 611 B. C., that Egyptian vessels, manned by Phoenician sailors, starting from the Red Sea circumnavigated Africa and returned to Egypt by way of the Mediterranean during the third year of the voyage. The most active navigators among the ancients were the Phoenicians, and the circumnavigation of Africa is probably their greatest achievement. Had they ever reached America we should have had some information to this effect. “Certain accounts,” says Marion McMurrough Mulhall, “which have been handed down by the early Carthagenian navigators confirm the story told by the priest of Sais, of the submerged land which lay outside the Straits of Gades. Avienus, who was well acquainted with the Carthagenian records, writes of it in his own ‘Ora Maritima’.” [2]
We are inevitably driven to the conclusion that no man of Solon’s time, or subsequent to him for a period of two thousand years prior to the discoveries of Columbus and those who came immediately after, had any information as to the size of the Atlantic, the continents beyond, and the civilizations in Mexico and Peru. No human being, however fertile his imagination, could produce a fable so pregnant with descriptive geographical facts that have no place in a fable, but which were found to have been descriptively true after a lapse of 2000 years. Egypt could only have known of the Atlantic and of the continents beyond with the colonies in Mexico and Peru from its association with a highly civilized people who kept records, who engaged in seaborne commerce, and through the sway of their empire linked together Europe and America. The priests of Egypt called this land Atlantis.
In the summer of 1898 a French cable was being laid between Brest and Cape Cod, and when the ship was about 500 miles north of the Azores the cable broke and it was necessary to drag the bottom with grappling irons for several days before the end of the cable was secured. The bottom of the sea was found to present the characteristics of a mountainous country with its high. peaks, slopes and valleys. The summits of the peaks were found to be rocky and in the deep valleys were found oozes. There was brought to the surface by the grappling irons a number of small slivers of rock embedded between the teeth of the irons; and some of these are now preserved in the Musée de l’Ecole des Mines at Paris.
Pierre Termier, Member of the Academy of Sciences, made these finds in their bearing on Atlantis the subject of a lecture delivered by him on November 30, 1912, before the Institut Océanographique of Paris; and, among other things, he said:
“The unanimous opinion of the engineers who were present at the dredging was that the chips in question had been detached from a bare rock, an actual outcropping, sharp-edged and angular. The region whence the chips came was furthermore precisely that where the soundings had revealed the highest submarine summits and the almost complete absence of oozes. The fragments, thus torn from the rocky outcrops of the bottom of the Atlantic, are of a vitreous lava, having the chemical composition of the basalts and called tachylyte by the petrographers.”
“The matter was described in 1899 to the Académie des Sciences. Few geologists then comprehended its very great import. Such a lava, entirely vitreous, comparable to certain basaltic stones of the volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands, could solidify into this condition only under atmospheric pressure. Under several atmospheres, and more especially under 3,000 meters of water, it might have crystallized. It would appear to us as formed of confused crystals, instead of being composed solely of colloidal matter. The most recent studies on this subject leave no doubt, and I will content myself with recalling the observation of M. Lacroix on the lavas of Mount Pelee of Martinique: Vitreous, when they congealed in the open air, these lavas become filled with crystals as soon as they were cooled under a cover, even not very thick, of previously solidified rocks. The surface which to-day constitutes the bottom of the Atlantic, 900 kilometers (562.5 miles) north of the Azores, was therefore covered with lava flows while it was still emerged. Consequently, it has been buried, descending 3,000 meters; and since the surface of the rocks has there preserved its distorted aspect, its rugged roughness, the sharp edges of the very recent lava flows, it must be that the caving in followed very close upon the emission of the lavas, and that this collapse was sudden. Otherwise atmospheric erosion and marine abrasion would have leveled the inequalities and planed. down the entire surface.” [3]
“Such are the data of geology. The extreme mobility of the Atlantic region, especially in conjunction with the mediterranean depression and the great volcanic zone, 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) broad, which extends from north to south, in the eastern half of the present ocean; the certainty of the occurrence of immense depressions when islands and even continents have disappeared; the certainty that some of these depressions date as from yesterday, are of Quaternary age, and that consequently they might have been seen by man; the certainty that some of them have been sudden, or at least very rapid. See how much there is to encourage those who still hold out for Plato’s narrative. Geologically speaking, the Platonian history of Atlantis is highly probable.” [4]
“In view of these facts, so familiar to any student of geology,” says Short, “it is not difficult to conceive of the former existence of Atlantis where the Dolphin and Challenger locate the mid-Atlantic ridge, described as 1000 miles in width in the latitude of the Azores. Supposing the existence of an Atlantic continent in the Tertiary period conceded, we have no means at present of determining the approximate time of its subsidence, unless we associate it with the dim and uncertain legends of the Egyptian priests and the ancient Americans. Whether the Atlantidae who threatened to overthrow the earliest Greek and Egyptian states, but who were swallowed up by the seas in the engulfment of their island continent, were the inhabitants of the Dolphin and Challenger ridges and the colonists of Eastern America, must for the present at least remain in doubt, though strong probabilities point to the conclusion that they were.” [5]
“Montesino tells us that at some time near the date of the Deluge, in other words, in the highest antiquity, America was invaded by a people with four leaders, named Ayar-mancotopa, Ayar-chaki, Ayar-aucca, and Ayar-uyssu. ‘Ayar,’ says Señor Lopez, ‘is the Sanscrit Ajar, or aje, and means primitive chief; and manco, chaki, aucca, and uyssu, mean believers, wanderers, soldiers, husbandmen. We have here a tradition of castes like that preserved in the four tribal names of Athens.’ The laboring class (naturally enough in a new colony) obtained the supremacy, and its leader was named Pirhua-manco, revealer of Pir, light (πῦρ, Umbrian pir). Do the laws which control the changes of language, by which a labial succeeds a labial, indicate that the Mero or Merou of Theopompus, the name of Atlantis, was carried by the colonists of Atlantis to South America (as the name of old York was transplanted in a later age to New York), and became in time Pérou or Peru? Was not the Nubian ‘Island of Merou,’ with its pyramids built by ‘red men,’ a similar transplantation? And when the Hindoo priest points to his sacred emblem with five projecting points upon it, and tells us that they typify ‘Mero and the four quarters of the world,’ does he not refer to Atlantis and its ancient universal empire?” [6]
“All the traditions of Central America and Mexico,” says Donnelly, “point to some country in the East, and beyond the sea, as the source of their first civilized people; and this region, known among them as ‘Aztlan,’ lived in the memory of the people as a beautiful and happy land, where their ancestors had dwelt in peace for many generations.” [7]
“The tradition of Votan, the founder of the Maya culture, though somewhat warped, probably by having passed through priestly hands, is nevertheless one of the most valuable pieces of information which we have concerning the ancient Americans. Without it our knowledge of the origin of the Mayas would be a hopeless blank, and the ruins of Palenque would be more a mystery than ever. According to this tradition, Votan came from the East, from Valum Chivim, by the way of Valum Votan, from across the sea, by divine command, to apportion the land of the new continent to seven families which he brought with him. It appears that he had been preceded in America by two others named Igh and Imox, if the researches of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg can be relied upon. In the Tzendal calendar, Votan’s name appears as that of the third day, while Igh and Imox are the first and second respectively. If, as is supposed, the names represent the true succession of the Maya chiefs, there is some ground for the Abbé’s view. The doubtful portions of the tradition which may be interpolations are the ambiguous assertions that he saw the Tower of Babel, and was present at the building of Solomon’s temple. Probably the remains only of the former structure may be referred to.” [8]
“While some of the details of the Votanic tradition are not worthy of a moment’s consideration, it is quite certain that in the general facts we have a key to the origin of what all Americanists agree in pronouncing the oldest civilization on this continent, one which was gray and already declining when the Toltecs entered Mexico.” [9]
The culture hero known among the Mexicans as Quetzalcoatl, the “plumed serpent,” was named Gucumatz among the Quichés and Cukulcan among the Mayas; and to him was attributed the introduction of agriculture, the arts, etc. “From the distant East, from the fabulous Hue hue Tlapalan, this mysterious personage came to Tulla, and became the patron god and high-priest of the ancestors of the Toltecs. He is described as having been a white man, with a strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes, and flowing beard” He “was skilled in many arts, having invented gem-cutting and metal-casting. He furthermore originated letters and invented the Mexican calendar.” [10]
“The hypothesis that the Nahua religion may have received some of its characteristics from India is altogether plausible and not without support in resemblances. The cosmological conception of the egg and serpent is found, as previously stated, on Brush Creek, in Adams County, Ohio. It certainly comes to us from Asiatic India. Serpent worship, not only among the people of the mounds but especially of Mexico, is the most patent fact revealed to us in ancient American sculpture. ‘Humbolt thinks he sees in the snake cut in pieces, the famous serpent Kaliya or Kalinaga, conquered by Vishnu, when he took the form of Krishna, and in the Mexican Touatiuh, the Hindu Krushna, sung of in the Bhagavata-Purana.’ Count Stolberg and Tschudi have both made arguments in favor of this view. Humbolt characterizes Quetzalcoatl as the Buddha of the Mexicans, the founder of the monastic establishments resembling those of Thibet and Western Asia. He further considers the flood of which they speak, identical with that of which traditions are preserved by the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the Shemitic peoples.” [11]
The legends of the Mexicans and Central Americans in connection with the Deluge are declared by those who have investigated to bear a much closer resemblance to the Deluge of the Bible and that of the Chaldeans than is the case with the other Old World traditions, and this, even though the Mongoloid Asiatics or peoples of Siberia, with whom the Americans are classed, possess no traditions in regard to the matter.
“The most important among the American traditions,” says Alfred Maury, “are the Mexican, for they appear to have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft made of cypress-wood (Cupressus disticha). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs. Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses.” [12]
These traditions are not all the same. In one, a man and his wife only are saved; in another, a man, his wife, and several animals are saved and birds are sent out from the bark, which is finally left on the mountain of Colhuacan. The story of the Deluge from the “Popul Vuh,” the Sacred Book of the Central Americans, not only refers to a flood by water, but plainly includes in the great cataclysmic event a seismic disturbance with the accompanying fires of volcanic eruptions. Even among the uncivilized tribes the legend of the Deluge persists, and in the case of the Mandan Indians there is preserved an image or representation of a vessel called by them the “Big Canoe” (the ark of the ancient Jews) around which are centered certain religious services in remembrance of the Flood. These legends are numerous, and, even among the uncivilized tribes in many instances, point to an island in the East, or toward the sunrise as the place of their origin.
“One of the most ancient races of Central America is the Chiapenec, a branch of the Mayas. They claim to be the first settlers of the country. They came, their legends tell us, from the East, from beyond the sea.” [13]
Bishop Landa, the first bishop of Yucatan, burnt many of the Maya books “because they contained nothing in which were not superstitions and falsities of the devil;” but he wrote a history of the Mayas which contained a description and explanation of their alphabet. This manuscript was preserved in the Royal Academy of History, Madrid, where it was found by a French priest, Brasseur de Bourbourg, who was enabled by it to decipher some of the writings of the Mayas.
Donnelly takes a number of hieroglyphic characters representing the Maya alphabet and considers how a less complicated alphabet might be derived from these by a natural process of simplification, giving due regard to some marked, central characteristic of each hieroglyph and the manner in which it might be modified in rapid writing from right to left by a commercial people, as was the case with the Phoenicians and others. In this way he traces eighteen of the Maya letters and shows them to correspond with, in some cases to be identical with, the same letters in Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek or Egyptian, one or more of them.
“It would appear,” says Donnelly, “as if both the Phoenicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another. They followed out different characteristics in the same original hieroglyph, as, for instance, in the letter b. And yet I have shown that the closest resemblances exist between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian signs—in the c, h, t, i, k, l, m, n, o, q, and s—eleven letters in all; in some cases, as in the n and k, the signs are identical; the k, in both alphabets, is not only a serpent, but a serpent with a protuberance or convolution in the middle! If we add to the above the b and u, referred to in the ‘Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,’ we have thirteen letters out of sixteen in the Maya and Egyptian related to each other. Can any theory of accidental coincidences account for all this? And it must be remembered that these resemblances are found between the only two phonetic systems of alphabet in the world.” [14]
“Juarros, in speaking of Palenque art, says: ‘The hieroglyphics, symbols and emblems which have been discovered in the temples, bear so strong a resemblance to those of the Egyptians, as to encourage the supposition that a colony of that nation may have founded the city of Palenque or Culhuacan.’ Giordan found, as he thought, the most striking analogies between the Central American remains, as well as those of Mexico, and those of the Egyptians. The idols and monuments he considers of the same form in both countries, while the hieroglyphics of Palenque do not differ from those of ancient Thebes. Señor Melgar, in a communication to the Mexican Geographical Society, has called attention to the frequent occurrence of the (T) tau at Palenque, and has more studiously advocated the early relationship of the Palenqueans to Egypt than any other reliable writer.” [15]
Marion McMurrough Mulhall says: “The following account of the sinking of Atlantis is taken from Plongeon’s translation of the famous Troano MS., which may be seen in the British Museum. The Troano MS. appears to have been written about 3500 years ago, among the Mayas of Yucatan, and the following is its description of the catastrophe that submerged the island of Poseidonis or Atlantis. ‘In the year 6 Kan, on the 11th Mulac in the month Zac, there occurred terrible earthquakes, which continued without interruption until the 13th Chuen. The country of the hills of Mud, the land of Mu, was sacrificed; being twice upheaved it suddenly disappeared during one night, the basin being continually shaken by volcanic forces. Being confined, these caused the land to sink and to rise several times and in various places. At last the surface gave way and ten countries were torn asunder and scattered; unable to stand the force of the convulsions, they sank with their 64,000,000 inhabitants’.” [16]
It seems that research, carried on subsequent to the time when Donnelly wrote, discloses the fact that Bishop Landa’s alphabet did not furnish a complete key for the satisfactory translation of the few Mayan manuscripts or codices that escaped destruction or for the translation of the carved glyphs upon public edifices and monuments. Lewis Spence says; “Landa’s ‘alphabet’ was at once hailed by Americanists as the key which would unlock the secrets of the Maya writing, the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of America. But it was soon found that all attempts to decipher the glyphs by its agency were only partially successful, and it has been conjectured that the Indian scribes, who looked upon the bishop as the ruthless destroyer of their ancient records, purposely misled him. At the same time most of the names and symbols for the days and months as furnished by him are known to be correct, as is found by a comparison of them with the glyphs appearing in certain native books known as the Books of Chilan Balam, where they are shown with their phonetic equivalents in European letters.” [17]
This, of course, detracts from the full force and effect that might be given otherwise to Le Plongeon’s translations; and it may do so somewhat in the case of Donnelly’s deductions from Landa’s alphabet in his comparisons with certain phonetic characters in the Egyptian and other alphabets, but it does not destroy the probative effect of his alphabetic deductions.
Spence not only ably supports the former existence of Atlantis as a physical fact, but, by many cumulative facts and logical deductions, urges that it was the source from which came the civilizations of Europe and America. He maintains, however, that the American civilizations could not have begun, as a result of Atlantean immigration, at an earlier date than the 1st century before the Christian Era, and, seemingly, without good and sufficient reasons. It seems to be reasonably well established that the Nahuas, or Mound-builders, entered Mexico about this time from the Mississippi Valley; and, assuming them to have been of Atlantean origin, Spence apparently overlooks their long occupancy of the valley prior to this migratory movement, and he also overlooks the undoubtedly older Mayan civilization. In support of his statement he suggests that during the gradual disintegration of Atlantis there was a period during which the former continental area was represented by two major islands; one, Atlantis, in the eastern part of the Atlantic in the vicinity of the Azores; the other, Antilia, in the western part of the ocean in the general location of the Antilles which are the remnants of this latter island. He further advances the suggestion that Atlantis was sunk by a cataclysm of nature far anterior to the engulfing of Antilia.
The civilization of ancient Egypt is so strikingly similar to that found in Central America and Peru that it seems inconsistent and highly improbable, if they came from a common source, that one should have arisen thousands of years before the Christian Era and the other but one century before, at which latter time the former civilization had long since been in decay. It seems but reasonable to assume the Egyptian and American civilizations began at or near the same period of time, and that the latter, upon isolation resulting from submergence of the homeland, was spent in amalgamation with the surrounding tribes. It is worthy of note that an elevation in the ocean beds of no great magnitude, when we consider cataclysmic disturbances that have visited the earth, would not only resurrect Atlantis, but make a land connection between Easter Island, on the one hand, and northern Peru and Central America, on the other.
Spence also assumes that the Cro-Magnons and the Azilian-Tardenoisian stock which he seems to regard as synonymous with Iberians were all members of the white race and Atlanteans.
In so far as I have been able to learn the Cro-Magnons are regarded by the authorities as distinctly Asiatic-that is Mongoloid or Turanian. If we are to look for present day descendants of the Cro-Magnon, it would seem that physically he survives in the Manchus and culturally in the Esquimaux. Madison Grant says, referring to the Cro-Magnon, “It has been suggested that, following the fading ice edge north and eastward through Asia into North America, they became the ancestors of the Esquimaux but certain anatomical objections are fatal to this interesting theory. No one, however, who is familiar with the culture of the Esquimaux and especially with their wonderful skill in bone and ivory carving, can fail to be struck with the similarity of their technique to that of the Cro-Magnons.’” [18]
One authority considers the Iberians as belonging to the Mongoloid family and that they are represented this day by the Basques and some other remnants, another regards them as belonging to the Mediterranean family of the white race in accordance with the classification adopted by many recent writers. Thus we may accept either until further research, if ever, reduces the matter to a reasonable certainty. A number of investigators have hesitated to include certain Turanian peoples, who closely approximate the white family, among the Mongoloids.
If it be conceded that Atlantis was the home of the white race, there should be nothing remarkable in finding a mixture of Mongoloid and white surviving in the Canary Islands, nor any justification in concluding this mixture represented an Atlantean type. The principal physical connection of the Canary Islands with other land during the period since man existed must have been with the adjacent shores of Africa long prior to the time when the Negro had reached this region from the eastern part of the continent or Lemuria. It would be natural, therefore, to look for a type in the Canaries that resulted from a mixture of the white Atlantean and the Mongoloid or Turanian of northwest Africa.
Some of the matters mentioned in the preceding chapter and some of the authorities there quoted, bear directly or indirectly on the former existence of Atlantis as a civilized empire with extensive domains. The history of Peru, the traditions of its people, and philology, all point to the fact that its civilization was due to an invading, colonizing people, who conquered the country; and there are many indications that this period reached much further back into antiquity than any incident of which we have any knowledge in connection with ancient Egypt. Referring to the roads of Peru, Donnelly says: “These roads were ancient in the time of the Incas. They were the work of the white, auburn-haired, bearded men from Atlantis, thousands of years before the time of the Incas. When Huayna Capac marched his army over the main road to invade Quito, it was so old and decayed ‘that he found great difficulties in the passage,’ and he immediately ordered the necessary reconstructions.” [19]
When the Spaniards conquered Peru they found a people far advanced in civilization. There was an organized government with its administration of justice; a priesthood in control of religious matters; public works administered by public authority; an extensive development of posts operated over an elaborate system of highways that rivalled in construction and extent any ever built by man, if it did not excell all. But on every hand was found abundant evidence of a former, greater, grander civilization that had long since been in process of decay. Such were the ruins found at Tiahuanaca,, at Gran-Chimu, the capital of the Chimus of Northern Peru, around Lake Titicaca, at Cuelap, in Northern Peru, and at or near Huamanga. Vast structures of hewn stone in the form of temples, palaces, walls, and other works, were found in an advanced stage of decay and ruin; and they were of such character that they could have been neither initiated by nor carried to successful completion by the civilization then found in Peru. The roads were from 1500 to 2000 miles long, from twenty to twenty-five feet wide, and were paved with a mixture of lime, pulverized stone and bituminous cement. They were cut through solid rock in many places; ravines that were crossed were filled with masonry; and suspension bridges were in use ages before their introduction in Europe. At intervals along the roads were taverns, and a system of posts was maintained for the rapid transmission of despatches in the same manner as was done by the Persians and Romans. Aqueducts of hewn stone were constructed, one, 450 miles in length, across mountain ranges and rivers. These stupendous works were beyond the abilities of the Incas found in Peru by the Spaniards, or the Spaniards themselves. Thus, it appears conclusive that, however advanced the civilization of the Incas may have been, it was but the decadent display in reflection of a former, greater, creative age that had long since passed.
When we attempt to analyze the events indicated by facts that have been stated, and particularly those given in the preceding chapter in relation to the Quichua and Aimara languages, we find something like this: There appears upon the scene somewhere in the highlands of Peru a people at a time so remote that the language they speak is the most primitive form of Aryan speech known to man. This indicates the remotest period of antiquity to which any incident fact connected with the White race has been traced; and that it relates to the white man is supported by native traditions which point to a white, bearded race as the founders of this civilization and builders of its great works, and by the mummified remains found of these ancient builders. It is manifest that the later-day successors of the ancient white founders of this civilization-the Incas were not only unable to initiate and carry through undertakings of the character wrought by the founders of the civilization, but they were likewise unable to prevent the decay of the civilization to which they had fallen heir.
If we concede the Atlantis of Plato was not apochryphal but represented an Atlantic country in which the progenitors of our race developed a great and powerful civilization with colonies in Europe, North Africa and the two Americas before it was finally overwhelmed by the Atlantic, the conditions with which we are confronted in Peru yield more readily to explanation. The following is ventured as a fuller visualization of events leading to the Peru of the Spanish Conquest:
At a very remote period in their movements from their island home, the Atlanteans found themselves, either by way of the Amazon or the north coast of South America, possibly both, in the table-lands of Peru. Here they began their work of building and of subduing the uncivilized people with whom they came in contact, keeping in communication with the home government and the colonies in Mexico through commerce and because of the influence of social and governmental ties. When they had arrived in sufficient numbers to enable them to get well started along the lines of progressive improvement, they found themselves more fortunately situated with respect to progress and ease of defense than the European colonies of Atlantis or even Mexico. In Europe the colonies of Atlantis were more or less always on the defensive from the continuous migrations and incursions of a constantly moving alien population or from other colonies, whereas the Peruvian colonies enjoyed comparative safety in the fastness of their table-lands from any incursions by the unorganized, uncivilized tribes that may have surrounded them. Furthermore, any prehistoric movements across the South Pacific that may have been responsible in any degree for the population of South America (the efficacy of which for this purpose, I seriously doubt) had long since ceased, in all probability, and the condition of the natives surrounding the Peruvian empire had been for ages much as they were found to be by the Spaniards. In this condition the advance made by the Peruvian colony was undoubtedly rapid. The colonists conquered, civilized, and utilized the natives in all their undertakings public and private. Unquestionably an admixture of blood began at once and continued to grow with the passage of time. This probably did not greatly affect the dominating, ruling element as long as communication with the home government of Atlantis was maintained.
The peaceful rapid progress of these colonists in their specially favored new home was, however, rudely dislocated and forever put an end to by the fearful cataclysm that wiped out the mother country in one day, or some cataclysm of great magnitude that resulted in the isolation of Peru from the mother country and the sinking of a former land area in the Pacific extending as far as Easter Island long prior to the final catastrophe. This must have occurred at an early date because of the stage of the development of the language as found by Dr. Falb and Señor Lopez. Upon the happening of either of these events, the incident demoralization and the resultant paralysis of all initiative could not have been otherwise than of such magnitude that the people must have been left for a long time in a helpless state of inactivity and torpidity of mind. Fear of the future and interest in individual safety must have been for long the dominating sentiments in all minds. In this isolation, cut off from people of their own blood and with all incentive to struggle onward and upward along the path of progress gone forever, time witnessed the diffusion of this white blood into that of the natives, the disappearance altogether of the pure white type, and the decay of the civilization that held such magnificent promise in its early stages. The natives found in Peru on discovery by the Spanish showed, by comparison with other tribes on the continent, a large admixture of white blood. The whites had left behind them to these natives a light complexion, a superior language, an enlightening, civilizing influence, and a material civilization; but this was not sufficient to enable the mixed-bloods to stem the tide of decay. This is but another example of a superior people disappearing from the face of the earth to the loss of mankind in general through the process of miscegenation. How many instances of this character does history record? The conditions in the tablelands of Peru must have been favorable to the civilization that sprung up and flourished for a time with the Aryan settlers in this land. We know of no change in these conditions rendering the surroundings prohibitive of its continuance. We should, therefore, naturally look for the eventual recovery of these people from the shock of the great cataclysm and a resumption of the march of progress by them. That this never occurred can be explained only by the submergence of the white Atlanteans in amalgamation with the surrounding peoples.
On examination into the ancient civilization of Mexico and Central America, we are confronted with a situation very similar to that found to exist in the case of Peru. When Cortez appeared upon the scene the Spaniards found that, while there was in existence an advanced civilization, there was an abundance of ruins and records and traditions evidencing the existence of a former and much older civilization that had long since been in process of decay, although there was presented to the world a people far advanced in government and the useful and decorative arts usually found as the accompaniment of civilization. Among these people there was, however, a more markedly emphatic record of the fact that their civilized forbears were of a bearded white race that came from the East—from “Aztlan”—than was the case in Peru.
As stated above, the civilization found by Cortez in Mexico, while marked, was distinctly of a more recent origin than the Mayan civilization of Central America. Since that time there has been diffused into the body of the Mexican people a considerable quantity of white blood, but even with this leavening influence the present day people of Mexico are utterly incapable of undertaking such works as were carried through during the ancient civilization. This indicates, as was the case with Peru, that the white blood of the ancient civilization lost in a diffusion with that of the surrounding natives was a sacrifice which did not leave the resulting people in a condition that enabled them to carry on where the old left off.
The Mexicans seem to have gone further in the development of language than did the Peruvians; for, in accordance with Donnelly, “The Aztecs, like the Egyptians, had progressed through all the three different modes of writing-the picture-writing, the symbolical, and the phonetic. They recorded all their laws, their tribute-rolls specifying the various imposts, their mythology, astronomical calendars, and rituals, their political annals and their chronology. They wrote on cotton-cloth, on skins prepared like parchment, on a composition of silk and gum, and on a species of paper, soft and beautiful, made from the aloe. Their books were about the size and shape of our own, but the leaves were long strips folded together in many folds.” [20]
“In addition to these stone and stucco records,” says Short, “the Mayas had books, which Bishop Landa describes as written on a large leaf doubled in folds and enclosed between two boards which they ornamented; they wrote on both sides of the paper, in columns accommodated to the folds; the paper they made from the roots of trees, and coated it with a white varnish on which one could write well. These books were called Analtees, a word which, according to Villagutierre, signifies the same as history. Bishop Landa confesses to having burned a great number of the Maya books because they contained nothing in which were not superstitions and falsities of the devil. Bancroft has quoted from Peter Martyr a description of these books, which conveys the additional information that they were written on many leaves joined together but folded so that when opened two pages are presented to view.” [21]
It seems impossible that a people with the genius to build the great structures, the ruins of which cover twenty square miles at Gran-Chimu, Peru, and include “vast areas shut in by massive walls, each containing its water-tank, its shops, municipal edifices, and the dwellings of its inhabitants, and each a branch of a larger organization; prisons, furnaces for smelting metals, and almost every concomitant of civilization”[22]—it seems impossible that a people of this genius in the Empire of Peru should fail to keep in communication with a people endowed with a similar genius located on the table-lands of Central America and Mexico. Nevertheless it appears that when the Spaniard reached America neither of these people had any knowledge of the other. The fact is they were not the same people in either case as the original founders of the respective empires. Judging from the primitive form in which the Quichua and Aimara languages were found, and from the further fact that in Central America the evolutionary process in the development of language had proceeded to the point of phonetic writing, it would seem that the former colonists from Atlantis had come in lesser numbers than the latter and their isolation from the mother country and the rest of the world brought about at a much earlier period. The smaller number in Peru were in time absorbed by the indigenous peoples, and in their new found isolation these people, lacking in the genius of the founders of the civilization, not only failed to make evolutionary progress but gradually declined from a position of former splendor to the inferior civilized condition in which they were found on the rediscovery of America.
As the American coast lines now stand, and under present climatic conditions, intimate intercourse between the Island Empire of Atlantis and the Central American coast would have been far more probable, with the best means that could be supposed available to Atlantean navigators, than would communication with Peru by way of the Amazon. However, the best considered scientific thought on the subject bears testimony to the existence in remote antiquity of a land connection between Atlantis and South America, there being now a ridge running from the supposed position of Atlantis toward the mouth of the Amazon.
It does not appear unreasonable, and it would account for the difference in development of language and other differences found to exist between Mexico and Peru, that a great convulsion which sank this connecting ridge with Atlantis, and possibly also severed Peru’s connection with Easter Island, at a much earlier period than the greater convulsion which destroyed Atlantis itself, if it were greater, brought about the earlier isolation of Peru as compared with that of Mexico. The latter came with the sinking of Atlantis, and from that time on the gradual absorption of the white blood by the native element led to the inevitable, as it seems, decline of the civilization that had blossomed in Mexico. The earlier ravages of Atlantis by cataclysmal nature before its final disappearance probably hastened emigration to Mexico and its European colonists. This accounts for the advance made by Mexico, as compared with Peru whose means of communication were now limited to that with Mexico by way of Ecuador and Columbia, a difficult path of communication for a sorely stricken people unless there were urgent appeals arising from self interest or a community of interest. Under these conditions Peru to the south may well have been forgotten by a Mexico that made progress for centuries afterward.
Within the historic period the Americas have been isolated from the rest of the world—the Old World as it is called; and when rediscovered two outstanding civilizations were found to exist in them, one in Mexico and Central America, the other in Peru. These two civilizations had for ages been free from and unaffected by any race movements such as occurred in the Old World. The oceans formed an impassable barrier and limited any movement into these continents to that small trickle of humanity which might percolate through the Aleutian Islands or across Bering Strait; and we must conclude that any movement of this kind could not, either in numbers or character of the people involved, reach the magnitude of a menace to any civilized people established in Mexico or Peru. We must also believe that the civilizations mentioned could not have been threatened in any degree by the surrounding Hunting Tribes in the capacity of an enemy at war. The civilizations mentioned were too far advanced in the arts of war and too well organized to suffer from any aggression on the part of the unorganized, surrounding tribes. We should, therefore, be justified in our expectation that two civilizations placed as were those of Mexico and Peru would endure for ages, unless the people who founded them voluntarily effaced themselves through the process of amalgamation with the surrounding indigenous people. Otherwise the isolation enjoyed by these people, who were freed from the aggressions of any other warlike, civilized people, afforded them unlimited opportunities for advancement in civilization and expansion.
In the meantime and throughout the same period, the civilized people who found themselves located on the shores of the Mediterranean and in the southwest corner of Asia were in a constant state of turmoil. This section resembled a human beehive in which races and tribes, including the aggressive members of the Turanian family, were constantly on the move, engaging in wars of conquest, or fleeing from a conquering foe to avoid the status of slavery. From time to time a semblance of law and order was preserved through the supremacy of some particular people; but, on the whole, the opportunity for the development of a civilization under the ideal conditions of peace and security in a chosen position, such as was enjoyed by the American civilizations, did not exist in this region. The conditions in Egypt most closely approximated those in America in this respect.
If we concede the Empire of Atlantis did exist; that in this land our progenitors evolved a high civilization and became a powerful people with colonies around the Mediterranean Sea and in the Americas; and that this empire was swallowed up in a great convulsion of nature if we admit this, must we not, under the circumstances given above, look to the colonies in America which enjoyed isolation and peace, rather than to the tumultuous colonies of the Mediterranean area, for light upon the ancient peoples of Atlantis? This seems logical and its correctness is certainly borne out partially by facts disclosed in America, as would doubtless have been the case to a far greater degree had not the Atlantean founders of the American civilization permitted themselves, after severance from the fatherland, to be engulfed in the inferior blood of the surrounding natives. Certainly what evidence America gives pointing toward Atlantis should be allowed the greatest weight, if not deemed conclusive, as to the points covered.
Some of the outstanding points presented and requiring the existence of Atlantis for their harmonization with other facts are these:
The discovery of the most ancient or archaic form of Aryan speech in that of the Peruvians—the Quichua and Aimara languages—is a leading one. It seems impossible to accept the suggestion of Dr. Falb in respect to this, “that the high plains of Peru and Bolivia must be regarded as the point of exit of the present human race.” It seems contrary to reason that the most virile, aggressive, and progressive members of the human race—the Aryan, or proto-Aryan, if you like,—could have had their origin or point of dispersion at this particular spot in the world and not have left a more lasting and durable evidence of this in numerous pure descendants upon the continent. The simple explanation that renders this otherwise abnormal circumstance, which is nevertheless a fact of the utmost importance, consistent with other known facts, is that formerly suggested: That the ancient Peruvians were white colonists from Atlantis; that they did not come in such numbers as enabeld them to dispense with the services of the indigenous population; that they imposed their language on this population, civilized them, and employed them in their works, either as slaves or laborers; that an early convulsion of nature cut them off from Atlantis and sunk a large part of the empire connecting Peru with Easter Island; and that before their language had developed beyond the primitive stage in which it was found into a higher form of complex speech, the blood of the ancient conquerors had become so diluted by native blood that this archaic language and a decaying civilization were passed on to the time when America was rediscovered.
The written and oral traditions and the monuments of the civilized Americans that bear upon the subject give evidence to the effect that the founders of these civilizations came from the East, over the sea; and all have legends of the flood in which one or more persons escaped the disaster, which legend, if it exists among the Asiatic Mongoloids, is an imported one. These legends pointing to the East as the place of the disaster, together with those of the Europeans in regard to the same matter, could have arisen only upon the occurrence of some such event as the engulfing of Atlantis.
The marked similarity, and in some cases identity, of words in languages on both sides of the Atlantic, and the sameness of the geographical names in Asia Minor and Central America, can be explained only by conceding it to be a fact that Atlantis existed as stated in the historical account given by Plato 400 B. C.; and what has been shown in regard to the alphabets in the eastern Mediterranean section and Central America can only be explained in the same way.
That whites were in America long before the historic period and were the originators of the ancient civilizations found therein cannot be seriously doubted; and the most reasonable explanation of their appearance, if not the only one, is that they originated in Atlantis. The connection of the Scandinavians and the Irish with America prior to the discovery by Columbus cannot assume a greater importance than would attach to an accidental contact or an occasional trading expedition. No one will seriously advance the opinion that the white blood found in America could be attributed to these sources. Among the civilized peoples the evidence of white blood was manifested in the ruling classes to the last; that among the Hunting Tribes seems evidently due to bands of whites becoming separated from the civilized people or those who escaped from Atlantis when it was swallowed up.
In spite of the fact that the Mediterranean area has been the scene of struggles by so many people, much evidence is here found, aside from that given by Plato, pointing to the existence of an Atlantis. In the mythology of the ancient peoples in this area there is an identity of many of their gods, and these are referred by Donnelly for their origin to the ancient rulers of Atlantis. His conclusions in this are ably supported by reference to the legends and myths of these people, all of which points to the West-to Atlantis. But no comment will be made in regard to evidence of the existence of Atlantis obtained from European or Old World sources other than a reference to India and to the Bronze Age.
The implements of the Bronze Age are, it seems, readily distinguishable from certain so-called bronze implements (Roman and others) which contain lead, the former being an alloy of tin and copper. These implements, indisputably of the Bronze Age, are found distributed in far greater numbers in the British Isles, Denmark, and the west coast of Europe generally, than in the Mediterranean in which the further east one goes the less the number found. This indicates that the west coast of Europe was nearer the source of supply which was necessarily, therefore, to the West. Naturally an Age of Copper should intervene between the Polished Stone Age and the Bronze Age. In and around Lake Superior were found copper mines that had been worked for ages when Columbus discovered America, and in America alone, it seems, is there found evidence of a Copper Age. From this the conclusion follows that Atlanteans worked the copper mines of Superior; that they first made implements of copper and subsequently developed bronze, which, as a commercial people, they carried to all the world.
“Although it is evident that many thousands of years must have passed since the men who wrote in Sanscrit, in Northwestern India, could have dwelt in Europe, yet to this day they preserve among their ancient books maps and descriptions of the western coast of Europe, and even of England and Ireland; and we find among them a fuller knowledge of the vexed question of the sources of the Nile than was possessed by any nation in the world twenty-five years ago.” [23]
In India 2000 years before the Christian Era an Aryan people were in control; they possessed an alphabet, a language rich in expression and kept records. There is to be found among these records maps and descriptions of the west coast of Europe, including the British Isles, although these people have been heretofore almost universally conceded to have had their primitive home in the table-lands of Persia and were not a seafaring people. At the same time there was across the Atlantic, in the isolation of Peru, another people who had engaged in structural works of such magnitude that in some respects they excelled even those of Egypt, and these people were using a form of Aryan speech the most primitive known to man-all of which was shown by evidence brought to light 3500 years afterward. [24]
We find that the people in Egypt in remote antiquity used a pictorial form of writing - hieroglyphics, primitive writings of the character from which are derived phonetic alphabets. On the other side of the Atlantic we find in Central America, in remote antiquity, a people who engaged in structural works of the general character and magnitude of those peculiar to Egypt. We find one branch of these people using a tongue declared to be to a large extent that of the Greeks, another using a language closely akin to that employed by the Semitic peoples; and among these people is found an alphabet in a transitional form between the hieroglyph and a simple sign representing a sound, and from which can easily be derived a number of letters used by the races in the Mediterranean.
The monogenist argues that the human race must have arisen from a primitive type that was brought about by evolution at some one particular spot on the face of the earth; and, having studied the flora and fauna surrounding the Indian Ocean and having plotted its depths, he demands in the name of geology, biology, archaeology, philology, paleontology, etc., that the long-buried continent of Lemuria arise from the depths of the Indian Ocean. One black stem from this primitive home is pointed toward Upper India and from this stem is derived the Dravidians, a Brown people, and from this stem branches one that becomes the ancestor of all Mongoloids. Further along comes another branch from which the White race is derived. This detritus of whites is thrown off at some indefinite point in Southwest Asia. The unsatisfactory part of this seems to be that while prehistoric (by this is meant Stone Age) relics of Mongoloids are here found in abundance there are none found of the White race.
The plant life and animal life on both sides of the Atlantic, present and prehistoric, make the same demand upon the scientific mind for a land connection across the Atlantic, as is made for a connecting continent in the Indian Ocean. The difference between the two cases lies principally in this: The existence of Atlantis is not only demanded by scientific considerations, but is called for by the history and traditions of the White race, whereas there is not the slightest whisper of a tradition in any of the races that points to Lemuria. Of course it is realized fully that as we go back into antiquity we must reach some point, if evolution means anything, beyond which even tradition must cease. But why is Lemuria given such place of honor in the scientific mind and Atlantis persistently denied a hearing, when the speech and works of the White race had bridged the Atlantic for ages before the true historic period began? One reason seems to be, that the admission of the existence of Atlantis might prove to be a severe blow to the monogenist. If Atlantis is conceded to be the home in which the White race developed its civilization, it would seem to go far toward fortifying the position of the polygenist as opposed to the monogenist; and certainly this concession would render simple of explanation many things that remain a mystery. The colonization of the Americas from this Island Empire would be a simple matter, as would also that of the eastern Mediterranean section. In this connection it does seem strange, however, that Spain should have been overlooked as a point for early settlement, but many reasons may have operated to bring this about. The Spanish peninsula with its gloomy and forbidding mountains may have been strongly occupied by a Mongoloid people, and, its coast lacking in harbors, the appeal of the eastern Mediterranean with its better climate and its multitude of harbors and its strategic, commercial position may have proved irresistible. [25] A great catastrophe which wiped out the land connection of Atlantis with South America seems to be the only reasonable explanation of the early isolation of the Peruvian colony, and this may have resulted in considerable changes in the continent of Europe itself at the other end of the area considered. As things now stand an elevation of the British Isles and the area immediately around to the extent of 600 feet would wipe out the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the English Channel, and would result in a considerable projection of land into the Atlantic beyond Ireland to the westward.
Our scientists and those engaged in research work pertaining to man on earth should contribute toward a cyclopaedic work that would include all facts collected from time to time, together with critical well considered conclusions arrived at with reasons therefor, in order that the layman might appreciate, understand, and intelligently form opinions for himself. As it is, there is much duplication, uncertainty and contrariety in opinion, often based upon unlike premises, and altogether too much dogma. What is needed is not the dogmatic statement that this or that is a biological law, but the reasons for concluding that this or that opinion may be accepted as having the force of law in the light of all circumstances.
The facts pointing to the existence of Atlantis are many. To begin, Solon, the great law-giver of Athens, visited in Egypt 600 years before the Christian Era, and, while there, learned many things from its wise men about the history of his own Greece and its relations with Atlantis in ancient times. A part of what was learned by Solon comes to us from Plato, who lived 400 B. C. Among other things, “The records inform us of the destruction by Athens of a singularly powerful army, an army which came from the Atlantic Ocean and which had the effrontery to invade Europe and Asia; for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the strait which you call the Pillars of Hercules there was an island larger than Libya and even Asia. (Asia Minor and North Africa correspond with Asia and Libya in ancient nomenclature.) From this island one could easily pass to other islands, and from them to the entire continent which surrounds the interior sea. What there is on this side of the strait of which we are speaking resembles a vast gateway, the entrance of which might be narrow, but it is actually a sea, and the land which surrounds it is a real continent. In the Island Atlantis reigned kings of amazing power. They had under their dominion the entire island, as well as several other islands and some parts of the continent. Besides, on the hither side of the strait, they were still reigning over Libya as far as Egypt and over Europe as far as the Tyrrhenian. All this power was once upon a time united in order by a single blow to subjugate our country, your own, and all the peoples living on the hither side of the strait. It was then that the strength and courage of Athens blazed forth. By the valor of her soldiers and their superiority in the military art, Athens was supreme among the Hellenes; but, the latter having been forced to abandon her, alone she braved the frightful danger, stopped the invasion, piled victory upon victory, preserved from slavery nations still free, and restored to complete independence all those who, like ourselves, live on this side of the Pillars of Hercules. Later, with great earthquakes and inundations, in a single day and one fatal night, all who had been warriors against you were swallowed up. The Island of Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea. Since that time the sea in these quarters has become unnavigable; vessels cannot pass there because of the sands which extend over the site of the buried isle.” [1]
The statements contained in this quotation are of a very startling character; and, unless founded upon facts within the knowledge of the Egyptians, it seems impossible that they could have conformed in so many respects to actual facts that came within the knowledge of Europeans only after the rediscovery of America by Columbus 2000 years later. How could an Egyptian priest, 600 years before the Christian Era, speak of the great sea (Atlantic) beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar) of the Continent (North American and South America) that formed the true boundary of the sea, of the colonies of Atlantis (Mexico and Peru) in the continent beyond-how could one so do unless he spoke with the assurance that comes from historical records that accurately preserved past achievements of the race? At the time when Solon received this information no people of the then-known world were a seafaring people who could have imparted any of this information of their own knowledge. The Egyptians were never a seafaring people; and it was not until the reign of Pharaoh Necho, or Neku, II., who succeeded to the throne in 611 B. C., that Egyptian vessels, manned by Phoenician sailors, starting from the Red Sea circumnavigated Africa and returned to Egypt by way of the Mediterranean during the third year of the voyage. The most active navigators among the ancients were the Phoenicians, and the circumnavigation of Africa is probably their greatest achievement. Had they ever reached America we should have had some information to this effect. “Certain accounts,” says Marion McMurrough Mulhall, “which have been handed down by the early Carthagenian navigators confirm the story told by the priest of Sais, of the submerged land which lay outside the Straits of Gades. Avienus, who was well acquainted with the Carthagenian records, writes of it in his own ‘Ora Maritima’.” [2]
We are inevitably driven to the conclusion that no man of Solon’s time, or subsequent to him for a period of two thousand years prior to the discoveries of Columbus and those who came immediately after, had any information as to the size of the Atlantic, the continents beyond, and the civilizations in Mexico and Peru. No human being, however fertile his imagination, could produce a fable so pregnant with descriptive geographical facts that have no place in a fable, but which were found to have been descriptively true after a lapse of 2000 years. Egypt could only have known of the Atlantic and of the continents beyond with the colonies in Mexico and Peru from its association with a highly civilized people who kept records, who engaged in seaborne commerce, and through the sway of their empire linked together Europe and America. The priests of Egypt called this land Atlantis.
In the summer of 1898 a French cable was being laid between Brest and Cape Cod, and when the ship was about 500 miles north of the Azores the cable broke and it was necessary to drag the bottom with grappling irons for several days before the end of the cable was secured. The bottom of the sea was found to present the characteristics of a mountainous country with its high. peaks, slopes and valleys. The summits of the peaks were found to be rocky and in the deep valleys were found oozes. There was brought to the surface by the grappling irons a number of small slivers of rock embedded between the teeth of the irons; and some of these are now preserved in the Musée de l’Ecole des Mines at Paris.
Pierre Termier, Member of the Academy of Sciences, made these finds in their bearing on Atlantis the subject of a lecture delivered by him on November 30, 1912, before the Institut Océanographique of Paris; and, among other things, he said:
“The unanimous opinion of the engineers who were present at the dredging was that the chips in question had been detached from a bare rock, an actual outcropping, sharp-edged and angular. The region whence the chips came was furthermore precisely that where the soundings had revealed the highest submarine summits and the almost complete absence of oozes. The fragments, thus torn from the rocky outcrops of the bottom of the Atlantic, are of a vitreous lava, having the chemical composition of the basalts and called tachylyte by the petrographers.”
“The matter was described in 1899 to the Académie des Sciences. Few geologists then comprehended its very great import. Such a lava, entirely vitreous, comparable to certain basaltic stones of the volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands, could solidify into this condition only under atmospheric pressure. Under several atmospheres, and more especially under 3,000 meters of water, it might have crystallized. It would appear to us as formed of confused crystals, instead of being composed solely of colloidal matter. The most recent studies on this subject leave no doubt, and I will content myself with recalling the observation of M. Lacroix on the lavas of Mount Pelee of Martinique: Vitreous, when they congealed in the open air, these lavas become filled with crystals as soon as they were cooled under a cover, even not very thick, of previously solidified rocks. The surface which to-day constitutes the bottom of the Atlantic, 900 kilometers (562.5 miles) north of the Azores, was therefore covered with lava flows while it was still emerged. Consequently, it has been buried, descending 3,000 meters; and since the surface of the rocks has there preserved its distorted aspect, its rugged roughness, the sharp edges of the very recent lava flows, it must be that the caving in followed very close upon the emission of the lavas, and that this collapse was sudden. Otherwise atmospheric erosion and marine abrasion would have leveled the inequalities and planed. down the entire surface.” [3]
“Such are the data of geology. The extreme mobility of the Atlantic region, especially in conjunction with the mediterranean depression and the great volcanic zone, 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) broad, which extends from north to south, in the eastern half of the present ocean; the certainty of the occurrence of immense depressions when islands and even continents have disappeared; the certainty that some of these depressions date as from yesterday, are of Quaternary age, and that consequently they might have been seen by man; the certainty that some of them have been sudden, or at least very rapid. See how much there is to encourage those who still hold out for Plato’s narrative. Geologically speaking, the Platonian history of Atlantis is highly probable.” [4]
“In view of these facts, so familiar to any student of geology,” says Short, “it is not difficult to conceive of the former existence of Atlantis where the Dolphin and Challenger locate the mid-Atlantic ridge, described as 1000 miles in width in the latitude of the Azores. Supposing the existence of an Atlantic continent in the Tertiary period conceded, we have no means at present of determining the approximate time of its subsidence, unless we associate it with the dim and uncertain legends of the Egyptian priests and the ancient Americans. Whether the Atlantidae who threatened to overthrow the earliest Greek and Egyptian states, but who were swallowed up by the seas in the engulfment of their island continent, were the inhabitants of the Dolphin and Challenger ridges and the colonists of Eastern America, must for the present at least remain in doubt, though strong probabilities point to the conclusion that they were.” [5]
“Montesino tells us that at some time near the date of the Deluge, in other words, in the highest antiquity, America was invaded by a people with four leaders, named Ayar-mancotopa, Ayar-chaki, Ayar-aucca, and Ayar-uyssu. ‘Ayar,’ says Señor Lopez, ‘is the Sanscrit Ajar, or aje, and means primitive chief; and manco, chaki, aucca, and uyssu, mean believers, wanderers, soldiers, husbandmen. We have here a tradition of castes like that preserved in the four tribal names of Athens.’ The laboring class (naturally enough in a new colony) obtained the supremacy, and its leader was named Pirhua-manco, revealer of Pir, light (πῦρ, Umbrian pir). Do the laws which control the changes of language, by which a labial succeeds a labial, indicate that the Mero or Merou of Theopompus, the name of Atlantis, was carried by the colonists of Atlantis to South America (as the name of old York was transplanted in a later age to New York), and became in time Pérou or Peru? Was not the Nubian ‘Island of Merou,’ with its pyramids built by ‘red men,’ a similar transplantation? And when the Hindoo priest points to his sacred emblem with five projecting points upon it, and tells us that they typify ‘Mero and the four quarters of the world,’ does he not refer to Atlantis and its ancient universal empire?” [6]
“All the traditions of Central America and Mexico,” says Donnelly, “point to some country in the East, and beyond the sea, as the source of their first civilized people; and this region, known among them as ‘Aztlan,’ lived in the memory of the people as a beautiful and happy land, where their ancestors had dwelt in peace for many generations.” [7]
“The tradition of Votan, the founder of the Maya culture, though somewhat warped, probably by having passed through priestly hands, is nevertheless one of the most valuable pieces of information which we have concerning the ancient Americans. Without it our knowledge of the origin of the Mayas would be a hopeless blank, and the ruins of Palenque would be more a mystery than ever. According to this tradition, Votan came from the East, from Valum Chivim, by the way of Valum Votan, from across the sea, by divine command, to apportion the land of the new continent to seven families which he brought with him. It appears that he had been preceded in America by two others named Igh and Imox, if the researches of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg can be relied upon. In the Tzendal calendar, Votan’s name appears as that of the third day, while Igh and Imox are the first and second respectively. If, as is supposed, the names represent the true succession of the Maya chiefs, there is some ground for the Abbé’s view. The doubtful portions of the tradition which may be interpolations are the ambiguous assertions that he saw the Tower of Babel, and was present at the building of Solomon’s temple. Probably the remains only of the former structure may be referred to.” [8]
“While some of the details of the Votanic tradition are not worthy of a moment’s consideration, it is quite certain that in the general facts we have a key to the origin of what all Americanists agree in pronouncing the oldest civilization on this continent, one which was gray and already declining when the Toltecs entered Mexico.” [9]
The culture hero known among the Mexicans as Quetzalcoatl, the “plumed serpent,” was named Gucumatz among the Quichés and Cukulcan among the Mayas; and to him was attributed the introduction of agriculture, the arts, etc. “From the distant East, from the fabulous Hue hue Tlapalan, this mysterious personage came to Tulla, and became the patron god and high-priest of the ancestors of the Toltecs. He is described as having been a white man, with a strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes, and flowing beard” He “was skilled in many arts, having invented gem-cutting and metal-casting. He furthermore originated letters and invented the Mexican calendar.” [10]
“The hypothesis that the Nahua religion may have received some of its characteristics from India is altogether plausible and not without support in resemblances. The cosmological conception of the egg and serpent is found, as previously stated, on Brush Creek, in Adams County, Ohio. It certainly comes to us from Asiatic India. Serpent worship, not only among the people of the mounds but especially of Mexico, is the most patent fact revealed to us in ancient American sculpture. ‘Humbolt thinks he sees in the snake cut in pieces, the famous serpent Kaliya or Kalinaga, conquered by Vishnu, when he took the form of Krishna, and in the Mexican Touatiuh, the Hindu Krushna, sung of in the Bhagavata-Purana.’ Count Stolberg and Tschudi have both made arguments in favor of this view. Humbolt characterizes Quetzalcoatl as the Buddha of the Mexicans, the founder of the monastic establishments resembling those of Thibet and Western Asia. He further considers the flood of which they speak, identical with that of which traditions are preserved by the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the Shemitic peoples.” [11]
The legends of the Mexicans and Central Americans in connection with the Deluge are declared by those who have investigated to bear a much closer resemblance to the Deluge of the Bible and that of the Chaldeans than is the case with the other Old World traditions, and this, even though the Mongoloid Asiatics or peoples of Siberia, with whom the Americans are classed, possess no traditions in regard to the matter.
“The most important among the American traditions,” says Alfred Maury, “are the Mexican, for they appear to have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft made of cypress-wood (Cupressus disticha). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs. Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses.” [12]
These traditions are not all the same. In one, a man and his wife only are saved; in another, a man, his wife, and several animals are saved and birds are sent out from the bark, which is finally left on the mountain of Colhuacan. The story of the Deluge from the “Popul Vuh,” the Sacred Book of the Central Americans, not only refers to a flood by water, but plainly includes in the great cataclysmic event a seismic disturbance with the accompanying fires of volcanic eruptions. Even among the uncivilized tribes the legend of the Deluge persists, and in the case of the Mandan Indians there is preserved an image or representation of a vessel called by them the “Big Canoe” (the ark of the ancient Jews) around which are centered certain religious services in remembrance of the Flood. These legends are numerous, and, even among the uncivilized tribes in many instances, point to an island in the East, or toward the sunrise as the place of their origin.
“One of the most ancient races of Central America is the Chiapenec, a branch of the Mayas. They claim to be the first settlers of the country. They came, their legends tell us, from the East, from beyond the sea.” [13]
Bishop Landa, the first bishop of Yucatan, burnt many of the Maya books “because they contained nothing in which were not superstitions and falsities of the devil;” but he wrote a history of the Mayas which contained a description and explanation of their alphabet. This manuscript was preserved in the Royal Academy of History, Madrid, where it was found by a French priest, Brasseur de Bourbourg, who was enabled by it to decipher some of the writings of the Mayas.
Donnelly takes a number of hieroglyphic characters representing the Maya alphabet and considers how a less complicated alphabet might be derived from these by a natural process of simplification, giving due regard to some marked, central characteristic of each hieroglyph and the manner in which it might be modified in rapid writing from right to left by a commercial people, as was the case with the Phoenicians and others. In this way he traces eighteen of the Maya letters and shows them to correspond with, in some cases to be identical with, the same letters in Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek or Egyptian, one or more of them.
“It would appear,” says Donnelly, “as if both the Phoenicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another. They followed out different characteristics in the same original hieroglyph, as, for instance, in the letter b. And yet I have shown that the closest resemblances exist between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian signs—in the c, h, t, i, k, l, m, n, o, q, and s—eleven letters in all; in some cases, as in the n and k, the signs are identical; the k, in both alphabets, is not only a serpent, but a serpent with a protuberance or convolution in the middle! If we add to the above the b and u, referred to in the ‘Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,’ we have thirteen letters out of sixteen in the Maya and Egyptian related to each other. Can any theory of accidental coincidences account for all this? And it must be remembered that these resemblances are found between the only two phonetic systems of alphabet in the world.” [14]
“Juarros, in speaking of Palenque art, says: ‘The hieroglyphics, symbols and emblems which have been discovered in the temples, bear so strong a resemblance to those of the Egyptians, as to encourage the supposition that a colony of that nation may have founded the city of Palenque or Culhuacan.’ Giordan found, as he thought, the most striking analogies between the Central American remains, as well as those of Mexico, and those of the Egyptians. The idols and monuments he considers of the same form in both countries, while the hieroglyphics of Palenque do not differ from those of ancient Thebes. Señor Melgar, in a communication to the Mexican Geographical Society, has called attention to the frequent occurrence of the (T) tau at Palenque, and has more studiously advocated the early relationship of the Palenqueans to Egypt than any other reliable writer.” [15]
Marion McMurrough Mulhall says: “The following account of the sinking of Atlantis is taken from Plongeon’s translation of the famous Troano MS., which may be seen in the British Museum. The Troano MS. appears to have been written about 3500 years ago, among the Mayas of Yucatan, and the following is its description of the catastrophe that submerged the island of Poseidonis or Atlantis. ‘In the year 6 Kan, on the 11th Mulac in the month Zac, there occurred terrible earthquakes, which continued without interruption until the 13th Chuen. The country of the hills of Mud, the land of Mu, was sacrificed; being twice upheaved it suddenly disappeared during one night, the basin being continually shaken by volcanic forces. Being confined, these caused the land to sink and to rise several times and in various places. At last the surface gave way and ten countries were torn asunder and scattered; unable to stand the force of the convulsions, they sank with their 64,000,000 inhabitants’.” [16]
It seems that research, carried on subsequent to the time when Donnelly wrote, discloses the fact that Bishop Landa’s alphabet did not furnish a complete key for the satisfactory translation of the few Mayan manuscripts or codices that escaped destruction or for the translation of the carved glyphs upon public edifices and monuments. Lewis Spence says; “Landa’s ‘alphabet’ was at once hailed by Americanists as the key which would unlock the secrets of the Maya writing, the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of America. But it was soon found that all attempts to decipher the glyphs by its agency were only partially successful, and it has been conjectured that the Indian scribes, who looked upon the bishop as the ruthless destroyer of their ancient records, purposely misled him. At the same time most of the names and symbols for the days and months as furnished by him are known to be correct, as is found by a comparison of them with the glyphs appearing in certain native books known as the Books of Chilan Balam, where they are shown with their phonetic equivalents in European letters.” [17]
This, of course, detracts from the full force and effect that might be given otherwise to Le Plongeon’s translations; and it may do so somewhat in the case of Donnelly’s deductions from Landa’s alphabet in his comparisons with certain phonetic characters in the Egyptian and other alphabets, but it does not destroy the probative effect of his alphabetic deductions.
Spence not only ably supports the former existence of Atlantis as a physical fact, but, by many cumulative facts and logical deductions, urges that it was the source from which came the civilizations of Europe and America. He maintains, however, that the American civilizations could not have begun, as a result of Atlantean immigration, at an earlier date than the 1st century before the Christian Era, and, seemingly, without good and sufficient reasons. It seems to be reasonably well established that the Nahuas, or Mound-builders, entered Mexico about this time from the Mississippi Valley; and, assuming them to have been of Atlantean origin, Spence apparently overlooks their long occupancy of the valley prior to this migratory movement, and he also overlooks the undoubtedly older Mayan civilization. In support of his statement he suggests that during the gradual disintegration of Atlantis there was a period during which the former continental area was represented by two major islands; one, Atlantis, in the eastern part of the Atlantic in the vicinity of the Azores; the other, Antilia, in the western part of the ocean in the general location of the Antilles which are the remnants of this latter island. He further advances the suggestion that Atlantis was sunk by a cataclysm of nature far anterior to the engulfing of Antilia.
The civilization of ancient Egypt is so strikingly similar to that found in Central America and Peru that it seems inconsistent and highly improbable, if they came from a common source, that one should have arisen thousands of years before the Christian Era and the other but one century before, at which latter time the former civilization had long since been in decay. It seems but reasonable to assume the Egyptian and American civilizations began at or near the same period of time, and that the latter, upon isolation resulting from submergence of the homeland, was spent in amalgamation with the surrounding tribes. It is worthy of note that an elevation in the ocean beds of no great magnitude, when we consider cataclysmic disturbances that have visited the earth, would not only resurrect Atlantis, but make a land connection between Easter Island, on the one hand, and northern Peru and Central America, on the other.
Spence also assumes that the Cro-Magnons and the Azilian-Tardenoisian stock which he seems to regard as synonymous with Iberians were all members of the white race and Atlanteans.
In so far as I have been able to learn the Cro-Magnons are regarded by the authorities as distinctly Asiatic-that is Mongoloid or Turanian. If we are to look for present day descendants of the Cro-Magnon, it would seem that physically he survives in the Manchus and culturally in the Esquimaux. Madison Grant says, referring to the Cro-Magnon, “It has been suggested that, following the fading ice edge north and eastward through Asia into North America, they became the ancestors of the Esquimaux but certain anatomical objections are fatal to this interesting theory. No one, however, who is familiar with the culture of the Esquimaux and especially with their wonderful skill in bone and ivory carving, can fail to be struck with the similarity of their technique to that of the Cro-Magnons.’” [18]
One authority considers the Iberians as belonging to the Mongoloid family and that they are represented this day by the Basques and some other remnants, another regards them as belonging to the Mediterranean family of the white race in accordance with the classification adopted by many recent writers. Thus we may accept either until further research, if ever, reduces the matter to a reasonable certainty. A number of investigators have hesitated to include certain Turanian peoples, who closely approximate the white family, among the Mongoloids.
If it be conceded that Atlantis was the home of the white race, there should be nothing remarkable in finding a mixture of Mongoloid and white surviving in the Canary Islands, nor any justification in concluding this mixture represented an Atlantean type. The principal physical connection of the Canary Islands with other land during the period since man existed must have been with the adjacent shores of Africa long prior to the time when the Negro had reached this region from the eastern part of the continent or Lemuria. It would be natural, therefore, to look for a type in the Canaries that resulted from a mixture of the white Atlantean and the Mongoloid or Turanian of northwest Africa.
Some of the matters mentioned in the preceding chapter and some of the authorities there quoted, bear directly or indirectly on the former existence of Atlantis as a civilized empire with extensive domains. The history of Peru, the traditions of its people, and philology, all point to the fact that its civilization was due to an invading, colonizing people, who conquered the country; and there are many indications that this period reached much further back into antiquity than any incident of which we have any knowledge in connection with ancient Egypt. Referring to the roads of Peru, Donnelly says: “These roads were ancient in the time of the Incas. They were the work of the white, auburn-haired, bearded men from Atlantis, thousands of years before the time of the Incas. When Huayna Capac marched his army over the main road to invade Quito, it was so old and decayed ‘that he found great difficulties in the passage,’ and he immediately ordered the necessary reconstructions.” [19]
When the Spaniards conquered Peru they found a people far advanced in civilization. There was an organized government with its administration of justice; a priesthood in control of religious matters; public works administered by public authority; an extensive development of posts operated over an elaborate system of highways that rivalled in construction and extent any ever built by man, if it did not excell all. But on every hand was found abundant evidence of a former, greater, grander civilization that had long since been in process of decay. Such were the ruins found at Tiahuanaca,, at Gran-Chimu, the capital of the Chimus of Northern Peru, around Lake Titicaca, at Cuelap, in Northern Peru, and at or near Huamanga. Vast structures of hewn stone in the form of temples, palaces, walls, and other works, were found in an advanced stage of decay and ruin; and they were of such character that they could have been neither initiated by nor carried to successful completion by the civilization then found in Peru. The roads were from 1500 to 2000 miles long, from twenty to twenty-five feet wide, and were paved with a mixture of lime, pulverized stone and bituminous cement. They were cut through solid rock in many places; ravines that were crossed were filled with masonry; and suspension bridges were in use ages before their introduction in Europe. At intervals along the roads were taverns, and a system of posts was maintained for the rapid transmission of despatches in the same manner as was done by the Persians and Romans. Aqueducts of hewn stone were constructed, one, 450 miles in length, across mountain ranges and rivers. These stupendous works were beyond the abilities of the Incas found in Peru by the Spaniards, or the Spaniards themselves. Thus, it appears conclusive that, however advanced the civilization of the Incas may have been, it was but the decadent display in reflection of a former, greater, creative age that had long since passed.
When we attempt to analyze the events indicated by facts that have been stated, and particularly those given in the preceding chapter in relation to the Quichua and Aimara languages, we find something like this: There appears upon the scene somewhere in the highlands of Peru a people at a time so remote that the language they speak is the most primitive form of Aryan speech known to man. This indicates the remotest period of antiquity to which any incident fact connected with the White race has been traced; and that it relates to the white man is supported by native traditions which point to a white, bearded race as the founders of this civilization and builders of its great works, and by the mummified remains found of these ancient builders. It is manifest that the later-day successors of the ancient white founders of this civilization-the Incas were not only unable to initiate and carry through undertakings of the character wrought by the founders of the civilization, but they were likewise unable to prevent the decay of the civilization to which they had fallen heir.
If we concede the Atlantis of Plato was not apochryphal but represented an Atlantic country in which the progenitors of our race developed a great and powerful civilization with colonies in Europe, North Africa and the two Americas before it was finally overwhelmed by the Atlantic, the conditions with which we are confronted in Peru yield more readily to explanation. The following is ventured as a fuller visualization of events leading to the Peru of the Spanish Conquest:
At a very remote period in their movements from their island home, the Atlanteans found themselves, either by way of the Amazon or the north coast of South America, possibly both, in the table-lands of Peru. Here they began their work of building and of subduing the uncivilized people with whom they came in contact, keeping in communication with the home government and the colonies in Mexico through commerce and because of the influence of social and governmental ties. When they had arrived in sufficient numbers to enable them to get well started along the lines of progressive improvement, they found themselves more fortunately situated with respect to progress and ease of defense than the European colonies of Atlantis or even Mexico. In Europe the colonies of Atlantis were more or less always on the defensive from the continuous migrations and incursions of a constantly moving alien population or from other colonies, whereas the Peruvian colonies enjoyed comparative safety in the fastness of their table-lands from any incursions by the unorganized, uncivilized tribes that may have surrounded them. Furthermore, any prehistoric movements across the South Pacific that may have been responsible in any degree for the population of South America (the efficacy of which for this purpose, I seriously doubt) had long since ceased, in all probability, and the condition of the natives surrounding the Peruvian empire had been for ages much as they were found to be by the Spaniards. In this condition the advance made by the Peruvian colony was undoubtedly rapid. The colonists conquered, civilized, and utilized the natives in all their undertakings public and private. Unquestionably an admixture of blood began at once and continued to grow with the passage of time. This probably did not greatly affect the dominating, ruling element as long as communication with the home government of Atlantis was maintained.
The peaceful rapid progress of these colonists in their specially favored new home was, however, rudely dislocated and forever put an end to by the fearful cataclysm that wiped out the mother country in one day, or some cataclysm of great magnitude that resulted in the isolation of Peru from the mother country and the sinking of a former land area in the Pacific extending as far as Easter Island long prior to the final catastrophe. This must have occurred at an early date because of the stage of the development of the language as found by Dr. Falb and Señor Lopez. Upon the happening of either of these events, the incident demoralization and the resultant paralysis of all initiative could not have been otherwise than of such magnitude that the people must have been left for a long time in a helpless state of inactivity and torpidity of mind. Fear of the future and interest in individual safety must have been for long the dominating sentiments in all minds. In this isolation, cut off from people of their own blood and with all incentive to struggle onward and upward along the path of progress gone forever, time witnessed the diffusion of this white blood into that of the natives, the disappearance altogether of the pure white type, and the decay of the civilization that held such magnificent promise in its early stages. The natives found in Peru on discovery by the Spanish showed, by comparison with other tribes on the continent, a large admixture of white blood. The whites had left behind them to these natives a light complexion, a superior language, an enlightening, civilizing influence, and a material civilization; but this was not sufficient to enable the mixed-bloods to stem the tide of decay. This is but another example of a superior people disappearing from the face of the earth to the loss of mankind in general through the process of miscegenation. How many instances of this character does history record? The conditions in the tablelands of Peru must have been favorable to the civilization that sprung up and flourished for a time with the Aryan settlers in this land. We know of no change in these conditions rendering the surroundings prohibitive of its continuance. We should, therefore, naturally look for the eventual recovery of these people from the shock of the great cataclysm and a resumption of the march of progress by them. That this never occurred can be explained only by the submergence of the white Atlanteans in amalgamation with the surrounding peoples.
On examination into the ancient civilization of Mexico and Central America, we are confronted with a situation very similar to that found to exist in the case of Peru. When Cortez appeared upon the scene the Spaniards found that, while there was in existence an advanced civilization, there was an abundance of ruins and records and traditions evidencing the existence of a former and much older civilization that had long since been in process of decay, although there was presented to the world a people far advanced in government and the useful and decorative arts usually found as the accompaniment of civilization. Among these people there was, however, a more markedly emphatic record of the fact that their civilized forbears were of a bearded white race that came from the East—from “Aztlan”—than was the case in Peru.
As stated above, the civilization found by Cortez in Mexico, while marked, was distinctly of a more recent origin than the Mayan civilization of Central America. Since that time there has been diffused into the body of the Mexican people a considerable quantity of white blood, but even with this leavening influence the present day people of Mexico are utterly incapable of undertaking such works as were carried through during the ancient civilization. This indicates, as was the case with Peru, that the white blood of the ancient civilization lost in a diffusion with that of the surrounding natives was a sacrifice which did not leave the resulting people in a condition that enabled them to carry on where the old left off.
The Mexicans seem to have gone further in the development of language than did the Peruvians; for, in accordance with Donnelly, “The Aztecs, like the Egyptians, had progressed through all the three different modes of writing-the picture-writing, the symbolical, and the phonetic. They recorded all their laws, their tribute-rolls specifying the various imposts, their mythology, astronomical calendars, and rituals, their political annals and their chronology. They wrote on cotton-cloth, on skins prepared like parchment, on a composition of silk and gum, and on a species of paper, soft and beautiful, made from the aloe. Their books were about the size and shape of our own, but the leaves were long strips folded together in many folds.” [20]
“In addition to these stone and stucco records,” says Short, “the Mayas had books, which Bishop Landa describes as written on a large leaf doubled in folds and enclosed between two boards which they ornamented; they wrote on both sides of the paper, in columns accommodated to the folds; the paper they made from the roots of trees, and coated it with a white varnish on which one could write well. These books were called Analtees, a word which, according to Villagutierre, signifies the same as history. Bishop Landa confesses to having burned a great number of the Maya books because they contained nothing in which were not superstitions and falsities of the devil. Bancroft has quoted from Peter Martyr a description of these books, which conveys the additional information that they were written on many leaves joined together but folded so that when opened two pages are presented to view.” [21]
It seems impossible that a people with the genius to build the great structures, the ruins of which cover twenty square miles at Gran-Chimu, Peru, and include “vast areas shut in by massive walls, each containing its water-tank, its shops, municipal edifices, and the dwellings of its inhabitants, and each a branch of a larger organization; prisons, furnaces for smelting metals, and almost every concomitant of civilization”[22]—it seems impossible that a people of this genius in the Empire of Peru should fail to keep in communication with a people endowed with a similar genius located on the table-lands of Central America and Mexico. Nevertheless it appears that when the Spaniard reached America neither of these people had any knowledge of the other. The fact is they were not the same people in either case as the original founders of the respective empires. Judging from the primitive form in which the Quichua and Aimara languages were found, and from the further fact that in Central America the evolutionary process in the development of language had proceeded to the point of phonetic writing, it would seem that the former colonists from Atlantis had come in lesser numbers than the latter and their isolation from the mother country and the rest of the world brought about at a much earlier period. The smaller number in Peru were in time absorbed by the indigenous peoples, and in their new found isolation these people, lacking in the genius of the founders of the civilization, not only failed to make evolutionary progress but gradually declined from a position of former splendor to the inferior civilized condition in which they were found on the rediscovery of America.
As the American coast lines now stand, and under present climatic conditions, intimate intercourse between the Island Empire of Atlantis and the Central American coast would have been far more probable, with the best means that could be supposed available to Atlantean navigators, than would communication with Peru by way of the Amazon. However, the best considered scientific thought on the subject bears testimony to the existence in remote antiquity of a land connection between Atlantis and South America, there being now a ridge running from the supposed position of Atlantis toward the mouth of the Amazon.
It does not appear unreasonable, and it would account for the difference in development of language and other differences found to exist between Mexico and Peru, that a great convulsion which sank this connecting ridge with Atlantis, and possibly also severed Peru’s connection with Easter Island, at a much earlier period than the greater convulsion which destroyed Atlantis itself, if it were greater, brought about the earlier isolation of Peru as compared with that of Mexico. The latter came with the sinking of Atlantis, and from that time on the gradual absorption of the white blood by the native element led to the inevitable, as it seems, decline of the civilization that had blossomed in Mexico. The earlier ravages of Atlantis by cataclysmal nature before its final disappearance probably hastened emigration to Mexico and its European colonists. This accounts for the advance made by Mexico, as compared with Peru whose means of communication were now limited to that with Mexico by way of Ecuador and Columbia, a difficult path of communication for a sorely stricken people unless there were urgent appeals arising from self interest or a community of interest. Under these conditions Peru to the south may well have been forgotten by a Mexico that made progress for centuries afterward.
Within the historic period the Americas have been isolated from the rest of the world—the Old World as it is called; and when rediscovered two outstanding civilizations were found to exist in them, one in Mexico and Central America, the other in Peru. These two civilizations had for ages been free from and unaffected by any race movements such as occurred in the Old World. The oceans formed an impassable barrier and limited any movement into these continents to that small trickle of humanity which might percolate through the Aleutian Islands or across Bering Strait; and we must conclude that any movement of this kind could not, either in numbers or character of the people involved, reach the magnitude of a menace to any civilized people established in Mexico or Peru. We must also believe that the civilizations mentioned could not have been threatened in any degree by the surrounding Hunting Tribes in the capacity of an enemy at war. The civilizations mentioned were too far advanced in the arts of war and too well organized to suffer from any aggression on the part of the unorganized, surrounding tribes. We should, therefore, be justified in our expectation that two civilizations placed as were those of Mexico and Peru would endure for ages, unless the people who founded them voluntarily effaced themselves through the process of amalgamation with the surrounding indigenous people. Otherwise the isolation enjoyed by these people, who were freed from the aggressions of any other warlike, civilized people, afforded them unlimited opportunities for advancement in civilization and expansion.
In the meantime and throughout the same period, the civilized people who found themselves located on the shores of the Mediterranean and in the southwest corner of Asia were in a constant state of turmoil. This section resembled a human beehive in which races and tribes, including the aggressive members of the Turanian family, were constantly on the move, engaging in wars of conquest, or fleeing from a conquering foe to avoid the status of slavery. From time to time a semblance of law and order was preserved through the supremacy of some particular people; but, on the whole, the opportunity for the development of a civilization under the ideal conditions of peace and security in a chosen position, such as was enjoyed by the American civilizations, did not exist in this region. The conditions in Egypt most closely approximated those in America in this respect.
If we concede the Empire of Atlantis did exist; that in this land our progenitors evolved a high civilization and became a powerful people with colonies around the Mediterranean Sea and in the Americas; and that this empire was swallowed up in a great convulsion of nature if we admit this, must we not, under the circumstances given above, look to the colonies in America which enjoyed isolation and peace, rather than to the tumultuous colonies of the Mediterranean area, for light upon the ancient peoples of Atlantis? This seems logical and its correctness is certainly borne out partially by facts disclosed in America, as would doubtless have been the case to a far greater degree had not the Atlantean founders of the American civilization permitted themselves, after severance from the fatherland, to be engulfed in the inferior blood of the surrounding natives. Certainly what evidence America gives pointing toward Atlantis should be allowed the greatest weight, if not deemed conclusive, as to the points covered.
Some of the outstanding points presented and requiring the existence of Atlantis for their harmonization with other facts are these:
The discovery of the most ancient or archaic form of Aryan speech in that of the Peruvians—the Quichua and Aimara languages—is a leading one. It seems impossible to accept the suggestion of Dr. Falb in respect to this, “that the high plains of Peru and Bolivia must be regarded as the point of exit of the present human race.” It seems contrary to reason that the most virile, aggressive, and progressive members of the human race—the Aryan, or proto-Aryan, if you like,—could have had their origin or point of dispersion at this particular spot in the world and not have left a more lasting and durable evidence of this in numerous pure descendants upon the continent. The simple explanation that renders this otherwise abnormal circumstance, which is nevertheless a fact of the utmost importance, consistent with other known facts, is that formerly suggested: That the ancient Peruvians were white colonists from Atlantis; that they did not come in such numbers as enabeld them to dispense with the services of the indigenous population; that they imposed their language on this population, civilized them, and employed them in their works, either as slaves or laborers; that an early convulsion of nature cut them off from Atlantis and sunk a large part of the empire connecting Peru with Easter Island; and that before their language had developed beyond the primitive stage in which it was found into a higher form of complex speech, the blood of the ancient conquerors had become so diluted by native blood that this archaic language and a decaying civilization were passed on to the time when America was rediscovered.
The written and oral traditions and the monuments of the civilized Americans that bear upon the subject give evidence to the effect that the founders of these civilizations came from the East, over the sea; and all have legends of the flood in which one or more persons escaped the disaster, which legend, if it exists among the Asiatic Mongoloids, is an imported one. These legends pointing to the East as the place of the disaster, together with those of the Europeans in regard to the same matter, could have arisen only upon the occurrence of some such event as the engulfing of Atlantis.
The marked similarity, and in some cases identity, of words in languages on both sides of the Atlantic, and the sameness of the geographical names in Asia Minor and Central America, can be explained only by conceding it to be a fact that Atlantis existed as stated in the historical account given by Plato 400 B. C.; and what has been shown in regard to the alphabets in the eastern Mediterranean section and Central America can only be explained in the same way.
That whites were in America long before the historic period and were the originators of the ancient civilizations found therein cannot be seriously doubted; and the most reasonable explanation of their appearance, if not the only one, is that they originated in Atlantis. The connection of the Scandinavians and the Irish with America prior to the discovery by Columbus cannot assume a greater importance than would attach to an accidental contact or an occasional trading expedition. No one will seriously advance the opinion that the white blood found in America could be attributed to these sources. Among the civilized peoples the evidence of white blood was manifested in the ruling classes to the last; that among the Hunting Tribes seems evidently due to bands of whites becoming separated from the civilized people or those who escaped from Atlantis when it was swallowed up.
In spite of the fact that the Mediterranean area has been the scene of struggles by so many people, much evidence is here found, aside from that given by Plato, pointing to the existence of an Atlantis. In the mythology of the ancient peoples in this area there is an identity of many of their gods, and these are referred by Donnelly for their origin to the ancient rulers of Atlantis. His conclusions in this are ably supported by reference to the legends and myths of these people, all of which points to the West-to Atlantis. But no comment will be made in regard to evidence of the existence of Atlantis obtained from European or Old World sources other than a reference to India and to the Bronze Age.
The implements of the Bronze Age are, it seems, readily distinguishable from certain so-called bronze implements (Roman and others) which contain lead, the former being an alloy of tin and copper. These implements, indisputably of the Bronze Age, are found distributed in far greater numbers in the British Isles, Denmark, and the west coast of Europe generally, than in the Mediterranean in which the further east one goes the less the number found. This indicates that the west coast of Europe was nearer the source of supply which was necessarily, therefore, to the West. Naturally an Age of Copper should intervene between the Polished Stone Age and the Bronze Age. In and around Lake Superior were found copper mines that had been worked for ages when Columbus discovered America, and in America alone, it seems, is there found evidence of a Copper Age. From this the conclusion follows that Atlanteans worked the copper mines of Superior; that they first made implements of copper and subsequently developed bronze, which, as a commercial people, they carried to all the world.
“Although it is evident that many thousands of years must have passed since the men who wrote in Sanscrit, in Northwestern India, could have dwelt in Europe, yet to this day they preserve among their ancient books maps and descriptions of the western coast of Europe, and even of England and Ireland; and we find among them a fuller knowledge of the vexed question of the sources of the Nile than was possessed by any nation in the world twenty-five years ago.” [23]
In India 2000 years before the Christian Era an Aryan people were in control; they possessed an alphabet, a language rich in expression and kept records. There is to be found among these records maps and descriptions of the west coast of Europe, including the British Isles, although these people have been heretofore almost universally conceded to have had their primitive home in the table-lands of Persia and were not a seafaring people. At the same time there was across the Atlantic, in the isolation of Peru, another people who had engaged in structural works of such magnitude that in some respects they excelled even those of Egypt, and these people were using a form of Aryan speech the most primitive known to man-all of which was shown by evidence brought to light 3500 years afterward. [24]
We find that the people in Egypt in remote antiquity used a pictorial form of writing - hieroglyphics, primitive writings of the character from which are derived phonetic alphabets. On the other side of the Atlantic we find in Central America, in remote antiquity, a people who engaged in structural works of the general character and magnitude of those peculiar to Egypt. We find one branch of these people using a tongue declared to be to a large extent that of the Greeks, another using a language closely akin to that employed by the Semitic peoples; and among these people is found an alphabet in a transitional form between the hieroglyph and a simple sign representing a sound, and from which can easily be derived a number of letters used by the races in the Mediterranean.
The monogenist argues that the human race must have arisen from a primitive type that was brought about by evolution at some one particular spot on the face of the earth; and, having studied the flora and fauna surrounding the Indian Ocean and having plotted its depths, he demands in the name of geology, biology, archaeology, philology, paleontology, etc., that the long-buried continent of Lemuria arise from the depths of the Indian Ocean. One black stem from this primitive home is pointed toward Upper India and from this stem is derived the Dravidians, a Brown people, and from this stem branches one that becomes the ancestor of all Mongoloids. Further along comes another branch from which the White race is derived. This detritus of whites is thrown off at some indefinite point in Southwest Asia. The unsatisfactory part of this seems to be that while prehistoric (by this is meant Stone Age) relics of Mongoloids are here found in abundance there are none found of the White race.
The plant life and animal life on both sides of the Atlantic, present and prehistoric, make the same demand upon the scientific mind for a land connection across the Atlantic, as is made for a connecting continent in the Indian Ocean. The difference between the two cases lies principally in this: The existence of Atlantis is not only demanded by scientific considerations, but is called for by the history and traditions of the White race, whereas there is not the slightest whisper of a tradition in any of the races that points to Lemuria. Of course it is realized fully that as we go back into antiquity we must reach some point, if evolution means anything, beyond which even tradition must cease. But why is Lemuria given such place of honor in the scientific mind and Atlantis persistently denied a hearing, when the speech and works of the White race had bridged the Atlantic for ages before the true historic period began? One reason seems to be, that the admission of the existence of Atlantis might prove to be a severe blow to the monogenist. If Atlantis is conceded to be the home in which the White race developed its civilization, it would seem to go far toward fortifying the position of the polygenist as opposed to the monogenist; and certainly this concession would render simple of explanation many things that remain a mystery. The colonization of the Americas from this Island Empire would be a simple matter, as would also that of the eastern Mediterranean section. In this connection it does seem strange, however, that Spain should have been overlooked as a point for early settlement, but many reasons may have operated to bring this about. The Spanish peninsula with its gloomy and forbidding mountains may have been strongly occupied by a Mongoloid people, and, its coast lacking in harbors, the appeal of the eastern Mediterranean with its better climate and its multitude of harbors and its strategic, commercial position may have proved irresistible. [25] A great catastrophe which wiped out the land connection of Atlantis with South America seems to be the only reasonable explanation of the early isolation of the Peruvian colony, and this may have resulted in considerable changes in the continent of Europe itself at the other end of the area considered. As things now stand an elevation of the British Isles and the area immediately around to the extent of 600 feet would wipe out the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the English Channel, and would result in a considerable projection of land into the Atlantic beyond Ireland to the westward.
Our scientists and those engaged in research work pertaining to man on earth should contribute toward a cyclopaedic work that would include all facts collected from time to time, together with critical well considered conclusions arrived at with reasons therefor, in order that the layman might appreciate, understand, and intelligently form opinions for himself. As it is, there is much duplication, uncertainty and contrariety in opinion, often based upon unlike premises, and altogether too much dogma. What is needed is not the dogmatic statement that this or that is a biological law, but the reasons for concluding that this or that opinion may be accepted as having the force of law in the light of all circumstances.
Notes
[1] Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1915, pp. 220-1; Atlantis, Pierre Termier. Works of Plato, translated (into French) by V. Cousin, vol. 12, pp. 109-113, Paris, pub. Rey and Gravier.
[2] “Beginnings or Glimpses of Vanished Civilizations,” p. 21, Longmans, Green and Co., London.
[3] Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1915, pp. 226-7, Termier’s Atlantis.
[4] Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1915, p. 231, Termier’s Atlantis.
[5] “North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 505.
[6] Ignatius Donnelly’s ”Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 391, Harper & Brothers.
[7] Ibid., p. 348.
[8] “North Americans of Antiquity,” pp. 204-5.
[9] Ibid., p. 210.
[10] Ibid., pp. 267-8.
[11] Ibid., pp. 465-6.
[12] Ignatius Donnelly’s “Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 99, Harper & Brothers.
[13] Ibid., p. 234.
[14] Ignatius Donnelly’s “Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 232, Harper & Brothers.
[15] “North Americans of Antiquity,” pp. 415-6.
[16] “Beginnings or Glimpses of Vanished Civilizations,” pp. 27-8, Longmans, Green and Co., London.
[17] “The Problem of Atlantis,” p. 127, by Lewis Spence, published by Rider & Co., London.
[18] “The Passing of the Great Race,” p. 112, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
[19] “Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 394, Harper & Brothers.
[20] “Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 352, Harper & Brothers.
[21] “North Americans of Antiquity,” pp. 420-1.
[22] Ignatius Donnelly’s ”Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 393, Harper & Brothers.
[23] Ignatius Donnelly’s ”Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 211, Harper & Brothers.
[24] If the Peruvians were Aryans speaking the primitive tongue, it cannot be conceived they entered Peru at a later date than their kindred were found to be in India.
[25] Since writing the above there has appeared “The Search for Atlantis” by Edwin Bjorkman, published by Alfred A. Knopft. The author identifies Scheria, the farthest point reached by Ulysses in the Odyssey, with the Old Testament Tarshish and the later Greek Tartessos and with Atlantis, and locates this multi-named region in the vicinity of Cadiz, Spain, where have been found ancient ruins and where the racial characteristics of the people differ quite perceptibly from those of the Peninsula at large. It seems to me that, instead of identifying Atlantis, he has pointed out a colony of Atlantis in Spain.
[2] “Beginnings or Glimpses of Vanished Civilizations,” p. 21, Longmans, Green and Co., London.
[3] Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1915, pp. 226-7, Termier’s Atlantis.
[4] Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1915, p. 231, Termier’s Atlantis.
[5] “North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 505.
[6] Ignatius Donnelly’s ”Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 391, Harper & Brothers.
[7] Ibid., p. 348.
[8] “North Americans of Antiquity,” pp. 204-5.
[9] Ibid., p. 210.
[10] Ibid., pp. 267-8.
[11] Ibid., pp. 465-6.
[12] Ignatius Donnelly’s “Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 99, Harper & Brothers.
[13] Ibid., p. 234.
[14] Ignatius Donnelly’s “Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 232, Harper & Brothers.
[15] “North Americans of Antiquity,” pp. 415-6.
[16] “Beginnings or Glimpses of Vanished Civilizations,” pp. 27-8, Longmans, Green and Co., London.
[17] “The Problem of Atlantis,” p. 127, by Lewis Spence, published by Rider & Co., London.
[18] “The Passing of the Great Race,” p. 112, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
[19] “Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 394, Harper & Brothers.
[20] “Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 352, Harper & Brothers.
[21] “North Americans of Antiquity,” pp. 420-1.
[22] Ignatius Donnelly’s ”Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 393, Harper & Brothers.
[23] Ignatius Donnelly’s ”Atlantis: the Antediluvian World,” p. 211, Harper & Brothers.
[24] If the Peruvians were Aryans speaking the primitive tongue, it cannot be conceived they entered Peru at a later date than their kindred were found to be in India.
[25] Since writing the above there has appeared “The Search for Atlantis” by Edwin Bjorkman, published by Alfred A. Knopft. The author identifies Scheria, the farthest point reached by Ulysses in the Odyssey, with the Old Testament Tarshish and the later Greek Tartessos and with Atlantis, and locates this multi-named region in the vicinity of Cadiz, Spain, where have been found ancient ruins and where the racial characteristics of the people differ quite perceptibly from those of the Peninsula at large. It seems to me that, instead of identifying Atlantis, he has pointed out a colony of Atlantis in Spain.
Source: George Mallison, Color at Home and Abroad (Christopher Publishing House, 1929), 86-111.
